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by Natalie Walston

The new, amended minimum wage law will affect farm employers and employees when it's implemented in March.

This past November, Ohio voters passed Issue 2, the Ohio Fair Minimum Wage Constitutional Amendment, and the new minimum wage of $6.85 per hour became effective Jan. 1.

In addition, the Ohio General Assembly passed enabling legislation to change some parts of the minimum wage amendment to the state's constitution. The legislature passed the amended substitute House Bill 690 on Dec. 20. It will become effective in March, which is 90 days after former Gov. Bob Taft signed it.

Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF) Senior Director of Policy and Political Affairs Rocky Black said OFBF was successful in getting the attention of legislators on three issues important to Ohio agriculture.

"First, we made an amendment that protects the privacy of individual employment records by requiring requests for documents to be notarized. The voter-approved amendment could be loosely interpreted to allow others easy access to records," Black said.

Second, the new amendment has rules that run parallel to the Federal Labor Standards Act, which allows exemptions from record keeping for certain agricultural employment.

Black said the new amendment also limits record keeping for casual, seasonal or family labor to only those provisions required by federal labor law.

OFBF has also written information on compliance assistance for the new minimum wage requirements, available online at www.ofbf.org.

"Although the enabling legislation becomes effective in a few months from now, employers need to know what H.B. 690 means and can act accordingly when the time comes," said OFBF Director of Labor Services and Policy John Wargowsky.

He added that early media reports claimed all agriculture workers are exempt from earning the new minimum wage. The truth is that the majority of Ohio's farmers will be required to pay the new minimum of $6.85 per hour. Only small farms, which use few workers, will be exempt starting in March.

"The farm community will be complying with what voters intended when they passed Issue 2 last November," Wargowsky said.

There are also some significant record keeping and other compliance issues farmers will have to deal with. He added that Farm Bureau's goal is to help farmers fulfill their obligations and provide workers with good employment opportunities.